


no hay tanto pan (but i got hella bread yo)

by livewirelullaby



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, PWP, partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 21:19:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17670302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livewirelullaby/pseuds/livewirelullaby
Summary: Reno and Rude accidentally blow up their transport home from a mission and are forced to take an impromptu beach vacation.





	no hay tanto pan (but i got hella bread yo)

**Author's Note:**

> for Thérèse.
> 
> \---
> 
> A little disclaimer: this is the first fic of mine to see the light of day in a little over five years. I'm hoping there will be more. I'm excited to share it with a fandom that has provided me with so many good fics and heated discussions about our beloved Turks. So, here it is: a couple hundred words of lean, 100% grass-fed ridiculousness. Thank you for the click, and I hope you enjoy!

He figures that the whole thing, him falling in love with Rude, hadn’t so much happened happened  _to_ him, crept up on him like the sun sneaking over the horizon. Quiet at first, and dim, and with Reno (slum kid that he is) still wary of the entire setup in general— _shouldn’t be nothing that hot or that bright,not for free—_ he’ll have to keep an eye on it. Then all at once the dawn picks up speed and that thing, that thing he won’t talk about, it’s taking over the whole fuckin' sky and Reno can’t look up or around without it being there, a constant presence at the corner of his mind, burning too hot, too bright, and there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.

  
***  
  
“Goddamnit, Reno,” is what Rude says, spitting the grit and the blood out of his mouth when they both hit the wet sand, a whistling piece of shrapnel from the freighter blasting clean through the air above them; Reno wraps his hands over his head, face down in the thinning surf.   
  
Reno, like his partner, is soaking wet, shirt suit and tie sticking damp and heavy to his rangy frame as the tide pushes them further up the shore. Unlike his partner, however, his shoulders are trembling with the force of his laughter, riotous and joyful, as he slips onto his back, shielding his eyes from the sun. Too hot, too bright.   
  
“Oh,” Reno sucks a breath, pulling blood off yellowed teeth, in dismay, "what’d I do this time, yo—we had enough time to get clear and Lustig’s not gonna be able to talk to no one about the boss’ plan.” He grins, flopping over onto his back, the small fabric sack they’d secured still clutched white-knuckled in his hand, shaking the contents for emphasis.   
  
“We got the goddamn rocks!” Reno continues, unmoving even as Rude climbs upto his knees and out of the relentless pull of the water. From the corner of his eye, he can see the other man rinse his sunglasses in the swell of a wave before replacing them on his face, shaking his head.  
  
“Yeah, we got the rocks,” Rude concedes. “And we took care of Lustig.” He pauses, heavy in the way that the sun is now, thick and slick and glorious, and Reno is glad he isn’t looking at him full on because he thinks it might blind him.  
  
“And?” Reno needles, as he pushes his hand against the sun again, flexing his closed fingers, blue eyes narrowed against the glare, even protected as he is. He shakes the bag again with his other hand. For emphasis.  
  
Rude looks over at him from his standing height, which might as well be from orbit from where Reno is, and grunts. Reno lifts his head, hair dragging in the pull of the water, to squint in the other Turk’s general direction, urging him to continue.   
  
“How’re we supposed to contact the boss to tell ‘im the good news?” Rude is usually direct with him when he’s angry, telling him exactly where he can go to do x, y, and z to himself. The circuitous nature of his language makes Reno turn his head slightly. This isn’t anger. This is something else.   
  
Rude continues. “All our _shit_ is at the bottom of the goddamn bay with him. Comms. Phones. Go-bags. Weapons.” The other man grunts. “All our credits. And we’re a long way from home, partner."  
  
 _Ahh, there it is._ Leaning back, comprehension blooming, no longer concerned, Reno flexes his fingers, opening and closing them, letting slivers of the sunlight filter through and strike him, sharp as a slap across his vision. He does this for a moment—index finger shifting from middle, middle from ring, pinky away from all of them—before chucking the fabric bag over at the other man.  
  
He can feel Rude tense when the precious cargo goes flying, begin to speak again with a sudden curse directed at his partner, but he stops when the contents of the bag slap against each other with a heavy, tinny sound. Reno doesn’t have to look to see the other man bend down and scoop it up, open the drawstring. He knows the sun is so damn bright that the steel and turquoise thousand-credit chips tucked in amongst the pale green rocks will burn a hole in his retina if he stares at them too long; Reno's glad the sunglasses survived.  
  
“Still mad at me?” Reno grunts, before the sun goes inkblot dark, Rude’s shadow stealing the breath from his lungs. Fingers, thick and damp and strong, wrap through and around his own, hauling him to his feet, and the sun overhead is replaced by a grin, all perfect white teeth and dark brown skin, and Reno knows which one he would choose in the darkest room, on the darkest night, in the coldest winter.  
  
“Might be. My second-favorite gun was on that boat,” Rude confesses, the grin disappearing, pushing the money back into Reno’s hands as if he can’t trust himself with it. Or with him. “But ain’t nothing a few beers can’t make better.”  
  
***  
  
The village up the shore isn’t big by almost any standard applicable to the civilized world, Reno reckons, but it’s got a shorefront motel with available rooms and a bar, and that’s good enough for both of them, the credits burning holes in their collective pockets. He’s already sunburnt, Rude points out ungracefully, and Reno declares himself uncaring, grabbing his partner’s drink and downing it when the girls show up.   
  
The package was still on them, in a cloth-and-straw side-bag—both of them deeming it too precious to leave in their chintzy room safe—but their suits had been changed out for more practical duds. They’d both opted for the longer shorts available at the inn's attached gift shop, with Rude taking a pack of A-shirts for practical purposes, along with a cream-colored, short-sleeved button-up, and Reno sliding into an irresponsibly floral-print, two sizes too big.   
  
“Get them to put lotion on you,” Rude says over the rim of his next drink, the pink and purple umbrella bumping into the side of his nose because he hasn’t bothered to take it out, and Reno stops for a second, wanting to laugh at the image of his partner—two-hundred and thirty pounds of unprocessed rage and muscle and grit, holding the tiny drink in his chapped, calloused hands—but his throat goes dry all of a sudden, and he pushes himself off the stool, letting it spin as he walks away.  
  
“Sure, partner, it’s right at the top of my to-dolist,” Reno calls, over his shoulder, his own wide palm already cupping the heavy, sumptuous weight one of the girl’s hips, as he flicks two fingers at the other man in a ‘see you later’ motion. “Be back for shift change by nightfall.”

Rude’s eyes—sunglasses replaced with a newer set (and spares in the room)—lighting on him, burning through him, even if he can’t see them. Reno swipes a bottle of rum from a table on his way to the water and tells the waiter to charge it to his room.   
  
  
***  
  
  
The girls don’t put the lotion on him, and Rude knew they wouldn’t, so there’s little sympathy in his hands as he slicks the thick, medicinal cream on that evening, back in his room. Reno yowls like a cat in heat or a cat getting skinned—Rude isn’t sure which analogy works best, if he’s honest, too much rum and too much sun—and clenches his fists in sheets the color of sand, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t pull back. There’s something tight in him, a nearly visible aura of tension. Rude figures it’s the pain, and is relieved when the redhead starts talking.  
  
“You can say it, yanno.”  
  
The salve coating his palms is expensive—they'd had to buy it in the motel's gift shop—smells bitter and bright, and it goes to work quick, cooling down the redhead’s freckled, blistered skin even as Rude continues to apply it. He’s generous in his ministrations, making sure that every inch of skin is thickly covered in the blue-tinged gel. They can work through the container and buy more in the morning. They've got the funds.  
  
He grunts in response— _say what?_ —and moves to the front of the chair where Reno is sitting, straddling the back, stripped down to his boxers; they’re new, with tiny Cactuars dancing across a black field. Rude likes them. He pushes his fingers over the top of the other man’s brow, down the long skinny route of his nose.  
  
“That you were right, yo. That the girls forgot to put lotion on me,” Reno muses, eyes half-lidded now as the pain of the burns ebbs away. “That no one’s gonna take care of me like you do.” The words are thick and bristly in Reno’s mouth, like a throatful of burrs he’s trying to cough up.   
  
Rude’s brow furrows, his fingers stilling for a moment. He continues to apply the lotion, over the redhead’s neck and shoulders, and shakes his head.  
  
“Ain't gonna say that, cos it ain’t true,” Rude murmurs, and then, in an attempt at levity, angles back: “Plus, seemed like you were plenty taken care of when I found the three of you in the cabana."  
  
“Nah,” Reno confesses, his eyes shutting as Rude movesback around, out of sight, to grab the lid of the tin the salve had come in, screw it back on. “Couldn’t get it up. Too much rum.” The tension visibly leaves Reno’s shoulders and spine, and Rude lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, his hand nestled at the top of Reno’s hip.  
  
It’s quiet in the room, for a second too long, and in that pause, Rude can feel the heat from Reno’s skin emanating off of him like a furnace. He thinks for a second that maybe he should make the other man drink something, water, or something else, so he doesn’t wake up more miserable than he will be already, but then Reno is rising up, up out of the chair, long limbs tanned and freckled in a way that Rude’s never seen before. Hell, in a way Reno might not have ever been before, stuck under the Midgar plate for so long.  
  
“You got two rooms,” Reno says, not looking at him. Rude’s glad for it.  
  
“Figured it’d be good to get our space where we can get it, before we get back to headquarters,” is what he says, not looking at Reno now, either.   
  
Reno nods, and makes to move back towards the adjoining door, to his own suite, with not so much as a thank you. Rude takes a step forward, mouth opening to say something, but is stopped in his tracks when Reno steals the stillness between them, words slipping over the sharp edge of his shoulder.

“Thanks, partner.”   
  
Rude answers in the only way he knows how.  
  
***  
  
He’s not sure if he’s _supposed_ to wake up when the sheets slip, rustle to one side, or supposed to pretend to stay asleep, but realizes that it’s a stupid, half-asleep thought when he sits with it a second longer than he should. He’s a Turk: he’d been awake from the moment the door whispered on its hinges, eyes open and hand fingering the edge of the blade keep under his pillow when Reno’s footfalls had fallen across the carpet. Turning his head, he tries to find Reno in the dark, but fails, and instead feels him, hands sliding across his shoulders and back, the redhead’s chest pressing against his spine. Rude gasps when blunt, half-bitten nails slide across the rigid V of his hips, and he doesn’t hold back a shivered groan of delight when his partner’s hand slides around the thickening base of his prick, under the band of his boxer-briefs; his are green, and have Chocobo sprinkled across them.   
  
“Still mad at me?” Reno asks, his voice a rough, heated mess of words and breath and all too familiar Slums accent. His fingers are working, finding the tip of Rude slick and needful under his fingerpads, and Rude bucks, the bed rattling on its frame.  
  
“It was..” He repeats, groaning when Reno turns his wrist, palming him, “..my second favorite gun.” As if it explained everything.  
  
Reno laughs, dropping down to slide between the sheets, over the thick trunk of his waist, and when his too-hot mouth slides over the fleshy head of him, swallowing the first inch, Rude thinks: maybe it does.  
  
***  
  
The girls don’t come around again after that first day. They’re three days out from extraction, the bartender knows their drinks, and Reno’s not burning so much anymore, not after that first rough night. Of course, Rude’s practical and on-the-hour application of lotion helps, but Reno likes to think it was a karmic paydown, that he had to get it out of the way to get here, to the place he’s at now.  
  
Rude’s hands are warm and so is the lotion when it goes on his shoulders and back, and he scrunches up his nose to make it more difficult for the taller man to get it onto his cheeks and forehead. Rude doesn’t bite, of course, and waits for Reno to relax, and the redhead grins, letting him finish. After, Reno takes up the bottle himself and applies some to Rude’s back and shoulders and neck—his head gets the treatment as well, with Reno exclaiming in great detail how it _SHINES_ , and he'll never need a mirror, yo, if Rude keeps this up—even though the other man doesn’t need it. Not really. His skin absorbs the light, leaves him dark and sleek and dangerous.  
  
Rude’s skin smells like the sun, liked baked ozone, warm clay, freshly baking bread, and when the lotion has been absorbed, washed away by sand and saltwater, Reno takes what he can of it in his mouth. He pushes his lips and tongue against Rude’s shoulders and biceps and collarbones like he’s teething, basking in the heat of it. The other man grumbles at this, pushing the redhead’s face away and towards other things his mouth should want more—beer, food, more beer—but relents eventually, the corners of his mouth lifting in a secret smile.  
  
Of course, moments later, he regrets giving in, because then Reno is sneaking his roving mouth into the space between his swim trunks and his thighs, sneaking out the first inch or so of even more sought-after skin. Rude comes so hard and so fast that there’s a tinge of a flush to his cheeks when the redhead lifts himself off his belly and chases his mouthful of Rude with beer. Rude kisses him, tasting himself, tasting the beer, and Reno laughs delightedly when the other man pushes him into the sand, trapping his hands and wrists, and gods, he’s hard again already.  
  
The second room becomes a moot point, but they keep it anyway because hey, it’s not their money, and Rude doesn’t ask Reno why they don’t go to the one that had started off as Reno's; it’s got a better view. But this bed smells like Rude, more, and soon it smells like them, and Rude doesn’t mind it, not really, the not asking questions.  
  
Reno knows this, and capitalizes on it, so that on the fourth day, when Rude wades out into the tide, he doesn’t ask, either. Not that he would need to. It’s painted there, in the finely tuned muscles in the other man’s back, every thing that isn’t being said, down to the punctuation, the curve of a question mark.   
  
His swimming skills aren’t the greatest, but he splashes out to meet him, to see where his eyes are focused, out there on the horizon. Rude isn’t saying anything, the sun bouncing off the lenses of his glasses, so Reno says it for him, mouth trailing along the curve of his bicep.  
  
“We can’t get it back, you know.” Reno states, pulling back and casting a look at Rude side-long, under the heavy fringe of his lashes. “Your gun.”  
  
“Don’t care about the gun.” Rude responds, unwavering, eyes on place the sky meets the sea. Reno swallows the barb suddenly caught in his throat, sharp and painful, and blurring his vision. Off in the distance, even if he can’t see it, even if he can only hear it, the heavy thudding of chopper blades thrums in the broadest part of his chest. Shinra. They’re being rescued.   
  
Then, he can hear it and he can see it: the narrow, sleek black missile, shooting through the sky. Tseng or Cissnei would be at the controls, maybe Even or Vincent if they weren’t off fighting another one of Veld’s useless missions, and the boss would have packed a new set of suits for them, brought them new sets of their weapons: guns for both, an EMR for Reno. They’d get on tonight and be back in Midgar by morning, just in time to debrief before heading back to their own—  
  
“It was a good gun.”  
  
Reno blinks. He looks over at the other man, unsure of what to say. Rude looks at him, eyebrow arching, secret smile enveloping his sun-kissed face in a subdued glow. It’s so goddamn beautiful it makes Reno’s molars hurt.  
  
“But I’ll get something better back home.”  
  
***  
  
The sun’s nearly gone by the time they get up in the air, new suits fresh and crisp and strange over his sun-baked skin. Cissnei had been nothing but amused giggles at Reno’s general state of freckled chaos, calling first dibs on playing connect-the-dots the next time he passed out at a general meeting, which managed to make even Tseng smile. Reno had grumbled, but focused mainly on tugging at his shirt and jacket until they were distended enough to feel comfortable, because of course the boss had chosen his proper size, instead of the one he usually wore.   
  
Vincent and Even are nowhere to be seen, so it’s just the four of them—Tseng, Cissnei, Rude and himself—when they take off, rising up high and sharp into the darkening sky. Now Tseng is working, talking with Veld about the status of the package, the demise of Lustig and his men, with Cissnei flying, and Rude is quiet, head propped back against the headrest, which leaves Reno alone with his sun, orange and fat, disappearing outside the window at an alarming rate.  
  
Reno doesn’t realize his breathing’s kicked up once it disappears, loud enough to be heard over the headset's mic until Tseng pauses mid-sentence, glancing back for a split second. It only lasts that long, however, because between them—hidden by the straw-and-cloth bag—Rude’s fingers are moving around his own, anchoring him down onto the seat, pushing Reno’sfingertips against the leather, first, then against his own skin. Rude hasn’t moved, hasn’t so much as taken a breath in, but his fingers are moving, smoothing over the sand still trapped in between the skin of Reno’s knuckles, down to the hollow of his wrist.   
  
Reno exhales, inhales, and starts to breathe again.  
  
Outside, the fading sun is a sliver of light on the dark edge of the earth, and Reno wants to feel something, something tragic and unfathomably deep like he had only moments ago, but he can’t. It isn’t there. Trapped between the weight of his partner’s fingersand the image of him, sitting beside Reno—sun-golden brown skin, top button of his impeccable suit undone, eyes shut under dark, curling lashes—reflected in the darkening mirror of glass, Reno has nowhere to go but stay right where he is, right next to Rude.   
  
Reno smiles, and closes his eyes, settling in for the long ride home.

 


End file.
